New Age Chapter 28, a Zoids fanfic by Sh33p

Hats off to this fic. It tops most fics I've read....including most of the ones I posted here. Tim Seltzer, seltzer@seltzerbooks.com

A crater in the middle of the Kairan Valley, within a remote part of the desert a few hundred miles from Farentown, and with it, the Blitz Team base. The crater was enclosed by an enormous cage, which currently sat in complete shutdown mode. The Arena Judge stood limply, staring off into space like an immobile chess piece atop the huge structure, while the machine guns that had once so menacingly loomed on base of the cage sat in silence as well. Two downed Zoids lay strewn about, and a few small bloodstains stained the dirt. Further debris included a pair of trashed ejector seats and a shredded parachute that had literally been ripped off of the man who`d been wearing it.

The source of the wreckage also happened to still be in the crater, namely two men in their mid-to-late 40s, currently seated dully on the forepaw of the downed Red Shield Liger, which looked far worse for wear than the equalled inactive Blue Saber Tiger. The difference was that the cockpit of the Shield Liger was still accessable, the head of the Saber Tiger had been essentially planted into the dirt and would require a few solid yanks from a Gustav to pry loose. Both Zoids wouldn`t be functioning for a while, either.

Both men bore matching, scabbed up cuts and scrapes across their opposite cheeks, and if they`d glanced each other`s way, eye to eye, the wounds would`ve mirrored each other perfectly. Both wore their old piloting outfits, and both were sipping what looked like a mixture of alchohol and coffee out of a pair of thermal plastic mugs.

"You still haven`t told me what it is you wanted to talk about after the battle," Steven pointed out, a hand on his back very obviously showing that he was still feeling a very major sting of pain from the earlier beating he`d taken. Leyon was calmer for once, though he was infrequently scratching at the scab that had formed on his cheek. There was another long pause and Steve took a sip from his cup.

"The shit`s about to hit the fan," Leyon exclaimed, pausing again to take a sip of his own. Steve quirked a brow. "What do you mean?" He asked, leaning forward slightly and propping his upper body up with his elbows on his knees.

"Just that. The shit`s about to hit the fan, Steven. The Golden Age isn`t gonna be golden much longer."

"You still haven`t answered the question with any actual detail, Leyon," the younger scientist pointed out with a monotone voice. Leyon nodded to himself and sighed.

"I take it you remember at least bits and pieces about the Ancient Zoidians, right?" Leyon asked, staring straight ahead with one of those looks that Steven had oftentimes found himself trying to imitate during their younger years.

"Yeah, I remember the classes and the archaelogy trips we took back at the Academy. What about them?" He asked in reply, still watching Leyon`s movements with a certain wariness out of the corner of his eye.

"For every single force in the universe, there is an equal opposite, a counterbalance to whatever it`s equally opposite of. For men, it`s women, for purely organic life, the techno-organic Zoids, for the natural, the unnatural, for life, death and for good, evil," Steve quoted the opening line of the old theory the two had come up with during their days as some of the sharpest minds ever to graduate the famed Schubaltz Phabes Zoid Academy, one of the most prominent learning centers for Zoid sciences and piloting on all of Zi.

"Take a look around, Steve. On your team, you have a young man with Zoidian blood, Bit Cloud. To counterbalance him is another young man with Zoidian blood, Kale Obscura, and to force them both into balance is a boy by the name of Vega Obscura, also with Zoidian blood. Go back down the line and you have the balance between Fiona Alysse Linette and Van Fleiheit, and Raven and Riese."

"... You just lost me," Steven muttered. "How can we even tell any of them have ancient Zoidian blood running in them? Let alone any relation Bit has to Van Fleiheit..."

"Simple. Go by numbers. All things divide to three, a balance, a counterbalance and a force that either holds them in check or knocks them out of proportion. I`ve been doing some research on all of it and come across a good many things, like Zoid Eve," Leyon stated grimly. "Zoid Eve?" Steven asked.

"Zoid Eve is the theoretical mother of all Zoids. The embodiment of a blend between the organic and the inorganic, life, birth, peace and prosperity. From what I`ve managed to dig up after hacking my way through old historical files, she was proven to exist around the time of the Death Stinger," Leyon began, going into the long winded explanation after a deep breath. "But the Death Stinger was only half of what really happened. There was a god damn cover-up back then, Steven. A big one, too. The Helic Republic had a lot to gain by making itself look like the ones who truly stopped the Death Saurer, and even more by making the claim that it was their technology - the Ultrasaurus and in a lie, the Gravity Cannon - that annihilated the Death Stinger."

"In truth, this was just half the deception. The Guylos Emperor after Rudolph the Third, namely Rudolph the Fourth, had a vested interest of national pride. With the Helic Republic trying to show their own greatness, Rudolph the Fourth revived his nation`s prideful ways and blew things even more out of proportion, eliminating most of the records of the events that really destroyed the Death Stinger and the Death Saurer, but that wasn`t it."

"How could I forget? Half of my theories on Zoid psychology come from when we went there..."

"The Valley of the Rare Hertz is the gateway leading into a city of the Ancient Zoidians. A big one. I don`t know it`s name but if I`m right about Zoid Eve, the city is prosperous, peaceful and unnatural. It`s also situated in the center of the Rare Hertz anomoly, discount the Rare Hertz and -"

"And the valley is one of the most hospitable places on Zi. A cool desert sitting near a large river of some of the purest water around, with soil rich enough to sustain just about anything," Steven interrupted. "Which means if you`re thinking what I think you`re thinking..."

"Nothing is moving in the Valley of the Rare Hertz. Everything is moving on the Dark Continent of Nyx," Leyon finished the sentence in roundabout fashion, a dark expression lining it`s way onto the faces of both men. "There was a second Death Saurer, as well, Steven. The true Death Saurer. From what I`ve dug up of historical conspiracies, it was powerful and large enough to literally eat the Death Stinger if it wanted, it`s power put the Geno Breaker to outright shame and it was able to withstand the Gravity Cannon like it wasn`t even phased. If you look hard enough, you can still find traces of the times it fired it`s ultimate cannon and annihilated cities across the planet."

"... I see. But we incorrectly attributed that to the Death Stinger`s brief stay in orbit..."

"Exactly. One destructive tyrant conceals the actions of the next if you spin it right," Leyon exclaimed knowingly. The two men weren`t scientists for nothing, after all. "The Death Saurer was in that ancient city in the valley. As was Zoid Eve. From what little I`ve scrounged up of the remains of Phabes` work, the Death Saurer was originally created to stop warrior Zoids. It went berserk though."

"Precisely. What doesn`t make sense is that there should be a third force involved in this. The wild card factor, and that happens to be a theoretical Guardian," Leyon explained. "A Guardian?"

"Someone who either keeps balance going or disrupts it completely. So far we see the disrupting factor coming into play as Kale Obscura, but Bit Cloud and Vega aren`t balancers. The natural extension of this chain of logic means there`s another out there, either a pure Zoidian or a pure human. A Guardian."

"You`ve put a lot of thought into this, haven`t you?" Steven asked grimly. "Yeah. It sounds crackpot, but so far..."

"So far, it`s disturbingly standing up to everything I can think to throw at it."

Further silence as both of the two middle aged scientists thought through the possibilities of what the theory implicated. If it was right, that would mean there was something insane coming, something dark beyond words and something that would rattle all of Zi to the core and beyond. The signs had started appearing, forces were changing, the balances had been struck and everything was coming together like a coffin slamming shut.

Dark times were ahead, the two thought, but they only knew a fraction of the story.

Still miles away in the middle of nowhere, a lone jeep rambled on at full speed, heading on the same bylining course as it had from the start of the driver`s journey to figure out what was so nagging at her senses. The jeep`s driver was named Leena Tauros, a battle scarred fifteen year old girl currently having an overkilled entree into the world of sudden angst and depression. The fact that she had become more than a bit out of touch with reality because of this meant that she failed to notice the loud pairs of beating sounds coming from either side, in front and behind her small vehicle. She also failed to notice how a shadow suddenly loomed overhead and then -

- she broke into a hard swerve, zinging between the huge war machines left legs and cornering hard to a dead stop while the Zoid slowed to a halt and doubled back.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, LEON, KILL ME?!" Leena demanded in an irate flash of her old self, just as the Blade Liger cockpit slipped open, with a semi-dumbfounded looking Leon Tauros standing up inside.

"Sorry, Leena! What are you doing out here, anyway?" He yelled out to his sister, who was still visibly upset. Leena paused though, calming with a few seconds and then answering the question with a small bit of reluctance, if only because it wasn`t exactly normal to be driving a jeep in a random direction at over a hundred miles an hour in the desert.

Then again, it wasn`t normal for a person to be replicating that sort of thing inside of a Blade Liger either.

"Felt something was funny... Was bugging the hell out of me, you?" She called back out. Leon nodded absently. "Same reason," he shouted back, plopping back down into the cockpit and putting the harness back on. "I`ll go up ahead," he said through the speaker unit. "See you at whatever we`re headed for..."

"Right," Leena mumbled, quirking an eyebrow up. "What the heck`s with him?" She thought, refering towards the fact that he never intentionally moved a large distance away from his younger sibling without making sure she was safe. Big brother complex and all that.

Whatever it was, Leon didn`t stick around to give much of an answer, instead turning the Blade Liger back in the direction that Leena herself was being compelled in, then taking off at full speed once more. With a shake of the head and a rumble from the jeep`s engine, Leena followed suit at her best speed.

"Oh. Sorry to hear that," Vega thought at Specular, still watching as the huge fried hulk of a Zoid was gradually lifted up off of the ground, slowly settling in between a pair of enormous magnetic panels, just as three or four dozen thin, spindly robotic arms extended out from the walls to either side, literally having to tear some armored panels off, while others merely broke away with ease. For the Storm Fury, a Zoid that had been so unstoppably quick and powerful, it was a highly ignoble condition it sat in. Disabled, Command and Combat systems completely offlined due to battle damage, sensors fried out of use, stabilizers shot to hell and back again twice over and even a nearly injured Zoid Core.

Fury was silent at that, and Vega - who was seated idly on the floor, still in his battlesuit despite having been out of actual combat for close to a day straight now - was about the same. A quiet hum filled the enormous room shortly thereafter as four half rings extended on two gigantic arms from the walls behind the Fury, clamping into two rings around it in a gigantic circle-cross.

Then there was more silence. And then another hum, different this time. Almost musical, but not quite. It was the hum of electricity, the hum of the two rings swishing about the Fury in opposite directions, one up and down, the other across with both rotating diagonally. The Zoid issued a low rumble, and Vega felt every hair on his body stand on end.

A low chuckle from the youth, though Specular indignantly found it quite the opposite. Fury rumbled again, and Vega almost openly laughed but stopped short just before he could.

"You never told me what Shadow is," Vega reminded her a bit sternly. If the Zoid could have moved, it probably would have shrugged indignantly and then sighed before giving the full story. Vega was persistent though, and his curiosity slowly coaxed Specular into admitting things that she probably rather disliked speaking about.

Shadow is... Was the youngest Organoid among us, now another takes that designation. He was originally the bound partner of your forefather, Raven. The two were inseperable, even when Raven would`ve just as soon claimed that he would allow Shadow to die, or when Shadow seemingly betrayed him in the service of the Dark Kaiser. But...

A longer pause this time. Specular only continued at the emotional prodding of her young cohort.

But he, like all Organoids, is almost immortal. He cannot die with age, only combat or choice. Shadow fears death, but he only realized mortality when Raven died. It left him bitter, angry. When She and I and he set Raven`s body to rest in a cavern within Nyx, Shadow stayed behind. She set me free in the years to follow, and I took this with me to visit him once. I forgot how long ago it was, but it was long enough that in the darkness of the abyssal cavern, Shadow had become consumed by his own bitterness and anger. He hated mortality, he hated anything that could die because Raven could and did die. Raven left him behind...

Shadow isn`t the only one. Van`s death had nearly the same effect on Zeke - the Liger Zero. He took that Zoid`s remains and fled into the desert, I didn`t see him again until we fought him the first time. Echoed though, when the Backdraft found me, but that`s another story for another time.

Shadow spent two hundred years growing, becoming more powerful. He had always been the most powerful amongst us, or at least the most potentially powerful. Ambient could defeat him during his youth but now I`m not so sure. The Zoid Magnite in the cavern, his hatred and betrayal, loneliness and utter isolation left him to do nothing but grow stronger - both in his powers and his hate. For much of that time, he Slept. And then...

Yes. The anger your brother has is strong, Vega. Together, you amplify one another like a magnifying glass to a laser, what one feels, the other unwittingly broadcasts. Your desperation to protect Sarah heightened how you magnified his own rage, enough that Shadow felt it. And other things that move on Nyx. Kale is like Raven once was, you know?

Indiscriminately murderous, single minded, destructive and vicious. Violent to the extreme and capable of backing it up, with the strength, skill and intelligence to defeat Organoids and Chosen alike. He`s also worse, because he`s inherited much from my own former bound partner. You`re foremother. Riese.

Very. With time, he may fully access the same telepathic abilities she has. And the other abilities. The same ones you possess.

Silence followed again. Vega didn`t bother with asking what powers he might have possessed, if only because it just didn`t interest him at the moment. Neither spoke from there, and for a long while, the only sound - even in thought - was the sound of the dull electromagnetics stimulating the Fury into healing itself.

"How did I let you talk me into this?" Leyon asked, trudging along glumly after the younger scientist.

"Because you`re stupid?" Steve answered with a cheshire grin, though the older scientist couldn`t see it. It had taken them ten minutes to climb their way out of the crater, how long they`d been walking was anyone`s guess but both had run out of that potent mixture of coffee and alchohol by now so it had to have been at least twenty or thirty minutes since then.

"Insane? Probably. Stupid? No," Leyon shot back, picking up his speed a small bit to where he was moving alongside Steven. The afternoon sun was pounding down on the two, the sands were thanklessly packed hard enough that their feet didn`t sink into the ground with every step, but it was still nothing that either man was going to be wanting to do again for a very long time.

"Don`t you mean 'obviously' and 'yes?'" Steve asked chidingly. The heat was starting to get to him as well.

"... You`d think we could hold a sane conversation after all that, couldn`t we?" Leyon muttered, staring at his feet.

"We`re both renegade mad scientists. Sanity is not something we`re capable of," Steve reminded with a shrug, both men continuing along without pause despite how they were verbally jabbing away at one another.

For how much longer the two walked the way across the desert, neither knew, but eventually both came to a dead stop, standing half-slumped against each other`s sides. Both were tired, both were aching all over still(and Leyon`s electrical burns were finally starting to show) and both were on the edge of falling over as it was. They were only standing because Leyon was too heavy for Steven to knock over and Steven was leaned at too sharp an angle to Leyon to crush him.

It was at about that time that Leyon noticed a red speck on the horizon. He shrugged it off though, and it got a bit bigger. Steven noticed it too, but he shrugged it off as well and it got bigger again. Both of them stared off in opposite directions, finally slipping down to the ground and leaning back-to-back in an exhausted fashion.

Both broke into a light fit of delirious laughter, then shot straight to their feet as a loud roar filled the air, rattling both to the very core. That red speck hadn`t just gotten larger - it had turned into a full fledged red Blade Liger! And it was standing right in front of them.

"... How the hell?" Both asked as the cockpit flipped open, revealing Leon Tauros as the young man stood up inside, staring down at the two mad scientists with an eyebrow soundlessly arched straight up into his forehead.

"How is he?" A voice came from behind. Vega jolted slightly, but he didn`t move to see who it was. The voice was easily recognizable, mainly since the person happened to be someone he was vaguely familiar with even before he`d wound up having her on his mechanical support crew.

"She, actually," he corrected as an afterthought, listening to the sound of a chair unfolding next to him before Katherine Takahori plopped down. "She?" The young woman asked. "She. The Organoid is a she, so the Zoid is a she, too," Vega answered rather plainly with a small shrug. "Ah... Weird."

"Not really, animals have gender, Zoids might have at one time and Specular likes to think of herself as a she, so..." Another shrug. "I see," Katherine replied with a blank stare down at the boy, who was still sitting Indian-style on the floor, like he had been all day. "Don`t you need to eat? Sleep? Use the bathroom?"

"Stigma put you up to t his, huh?" Vega asked, instantly recognizing the concerns as Stoller`s own.

"You know that guy too well," the woman replied with a nonchalant tone. "But he`s right, you haven`t eaten, slept or used the bathroom in three days," she stated with a dry tone of voice. "I`ve gone on less before," Vega said with another shrug. "Maybe, but it isn`t healthy and you need to be healthy if you`re going to continue being a Zoid Warrior. Besides, doesn`t Specular want you to not die of malnutrition and sleep deprivation?"

"Specular passed out again. The electricity stings almost as much as the actual damage.

"She`ll be okay," Vega stated. "Want me to bring you something to eat? Maybe a sleeping bag?"

"Food, sure. I need to keep on a reasonable sleep schedule though, and if I pass out now, I won`t be able to do that," Vega stated glumly, resting his head in one hand. "Then at least use the friggin` bathroom..."

"Torson is enough of a whiny bitch, thank you very much," Vega cynically muttered, half under his breath. Kat glared at him a bit murderously but calmed as soon as she realized he was completely unphased.

With an uttering of several profane words under her breath, Katherine rose to her feet and wandered off to do just that, leaving the sleep, food and hygienically deprived Vega to sit and continue his wordless vigil for Specular and the Fury.

That night, elsewhere and far away from the chaos that was setting itself up to break loose across the face of the planet, and across the collective face of a uniquely interconnected group of people, Marcus Harlock and Abigail Summers were aboard a Hammerhead flight bound for the Garamos Islands, just south of the equator. It was time for a vacation, a week long break from it all. The ZBC had granted a leave for both Mark and Kyle following their little Suicide Days venture, and while Kyle had decided to use the time doing whatever, Mark had agreed that it was time for he and his girlfriend to have a nice, private trip away from battling.

Abbie, though uneased at the prospect of traveling over the ocean in a Zoid, was conced out in the seat next to the aisle, but Mark was wide awake. Doing what he`d been doing since Abbie had fallen asleep.

"Tails," he nodded to himself. Two times out of three, he`d been wrong. It was rapidly dawning on him, as he made one final toss and flunked it again, that luck was no longer going to be on his side. If not in coin tossing, then probably not in anything else.

Thoughtfully, Mark turned and glanced out at the sea beneath the Hammerhead. It seemed as though his luck had finally run out...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author`s Note: Sorry for this one being a bit shorter than usual, but after the marathons of the last few chapters, it was about time for a slower, calmer, shorter bit of story, yes? Besides, I think I revealed enough of the plot to everyone to make up for the lack of chapter length :P

Vile21x: The whole point of brutalizing Leena like that was to make people complain. If you`ll notice, most people who make her angsty tend to screw her character up either with rape, humiliation or the death of a family member or friend, and they never touch her appearance. Consider what I did a lead pipe upside the heads of people who do that.

EndlessAdventure: *Cracked up when he first read that.* Someone actually got it XD *Doesn`t actually play WH40K, but knows a few who do, so...*

DJ Wolfwood: Gave it quite a bit of thought actually, but decided against it. My plate`s full enough as it is right now, don`t really have the time/stamina to be a part of another group(already a member of the VALL thing), so sorry, thanks, but no thanks. Hope you enjoy the story though :P That`s all for now folks. Enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out and see ya next time!

New Age by Sh33p

Best Fanfics on the Web, selected by Tim

Tim Seltzer's page www.seltzerbooks.com/tim.html

Discuss books at Blogging about Books http://www.seltzerbooks.com/blog/
Other book reviews by Richard Seltzer
Opus authors -- contemporary writers whose entire work is great
The Readers' Corner and Writers Showcase

This site is published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, West Roxbury, MA 02132-002. (203) 553-9925 seltzer@seltzerbooks.com

Book collections on CD and DVD. A library for the price of a book.
Limited time offer: 2 for the price of 1

Return to Samizdat Express


	Webseltzerbooks.com

New Age

Chapter 28

Renegade Mad Scientist Powwow